A Woman’s Battles and Transformations

In this penetrating work, French novelist Louis (History of Violence) turns a sharp yet forgiving gaze on the struggles of his mother, and the complicated bond he shared with her, “a coming together that started with our drifting apart.” Slipping seamlessly between lyrical and academic modes of storytelling, he offers more of an impressionistic study than a biography of his mother, sketching the story of her life around the dreams she was forced to give up: leaving hospitality school in the 1950s at age 17 to have her first child; remaining in an unhappy marriage to have a second child; fleeing from one alcoholic husband to another; and raising three additional children. Woven throughout the narrative of unrelenting misfortune are moments of liberation—culminating in his mother’s decision to leave the author’s father—alongside Louis’s own affecting account of grappling with his queerness (“What is a man? Virility, power, camaraderie with other boys? I never had any of that”), long a point of contention between mother and son. As he recounts the “fragments of tenderness” that eventually led them to reconcile, Louis delivers an incisive portrait of the ways oppression and social forces brought chaos to their lives, and how they found freedom through compassion. This slim account has serious substance. (Aug.)